Regarding the question as to why Athearn and Tyco did the silver
w/freight strip on their F-units, to me, the answer is obvious. It
was simple marketing -- the silver simply looks better than the
grey. And you can't really blame Athearn and Tyco for using silver
because the Burlington waycars were painted silver, too. By
painting the locomotives the same color as the cabooses, you had a
matching set.
Frankly speaking, I always thought that the silver looked better.
Furthermore, in bright sunlight, the prototype's light-grey almost
looks kind of silver-ish. So, you really can't blame them for
taking the path they did, wrong as it was. And, correct me if I'm
wrong, but didn't Bachmann or some other manufacturer use a light
grey at one point on both F-units and cabooses? I remember how
unappealing the models looked.
Then, there is also this: Can you imagine the load of questions and
criticisms they would have received, had they used the grey instead
of the silver? They would have been constantly dealing with that
because ignorant people would not have understood about the
prototype's color.
Lastly, I imagine that the mismatched bookends might not have sold
very well in non-Q markets. The reality is that the silver F's did
sell well and are actually still sought by many. I have a new ABA
set of Mantua (Tyco) F-units and people often offer to buy them from
me.
--
-Val
Sun
Mar 10, 2013 7:45 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
Years ago Athearn painted some F-7's red
& dark gray. They looked like a bad dream. Granted
their usual silver w/freight strip was always incorrect but Tyco
did it too. They both could have used a very light grey
instead of silver and I don't know why they weren't challenged
to do it correct back then.
____________
____________________
__._,_.___
![]()
__,_._,___
|
|